Al-Mu'minun · Makki · ayah 69 of 118

Al-Mu'minun 23:69

أَمْ لَمْ يَعْرِفُوا۟ رَسُولَهُمْ فَهُمْ لَهُۥ مُنكِرُونَ

“Or did they not know their Messenger, so they are toward him disacknowledging?”

Saheeh International

Essence

They had known the Messenger all his life as truthful and trustworthy; their denial came from refusing what they recognised, not from not knowing.

A reflection

Knowing a face and refusing to place it

A woman walks past a café. Inside, at the window, her estranged sister sees her and lifts a hand to wave. The woman knows the face instantly. She looks straight ahead and walks on without slowing.

The ayah sets two roots against each other. Yaʿrifū, to know, and munkirūn, to deny. The lexicons give both established pictures.

ʿArafa carries ease and settledness. The ʿurf was a horse's mane, hair lying neatly after hair. A sweet scent was ʿarf, because the soul rests in it. To know something, in this root, is to be at home with it.

Nakira is the opposite. One lexicon defines it as the heart meeting something it has no room for, so it will not settle on it. It is a face you cannot place. Inkār is the tongue refusing to acknowledge what the heart has been offered.

So the ayah asks a pointed question. Did they not know their Messenger, so that they now cannot place him? Was he a stranger to them?

The answer, as two modern commentaries spell out, is no. They knew him. They knew his truthfulness and his trustworthiness. One commentator says they knew him to have every perfection fitting for prophets.

That leaves only one possibility. They recognised him and refused to place him. Like the woman outside the café, they knew the face and walked on.

The Quran names this elsewhere: they recognise the favour of Allah and then deny it (16:83).

This is a disturbing kind of denial, because it is not ignorance. It is a choice made against knowledge. And it begins in small ways, whenever we pretend not to recognise a truth that would cost us something. A debt, an apology, a change of life. The sister at the window is still a sister. The truth we walk past is still the truth.

The full entry has 5 more reflections, questions to sit with, and "Live it today" - with the words, the roots and the tafsir alongside. Free, no account, works offline.